According to Hebrews 5, the office of high priest – and what he does – is the key to our salvation, not us or anything that we do. That point is made clear throughout the chapter, starting in verse 1, which states that “Every high priest is selected from among men,” for the specific purpose of “representing us in all matters related to God,” the biggest “matter” to God being the high priest “offering gifts and sacrifices for sins.”
Two points here: first of all, that God does not accept us representing ourselves in our dealings with him. We can’t act in our own defence, or argue our case. Which is understandable because God does not allow sin of any kind into his presence, and we are sinners. Only the high priest God selects is allowed to represent us; and secondly, only if the high priest offers the sacrifices for sins that God requires too.
On just those two points, then, we’re already totally dependent on our high priest. We don’t get a look in at all.
God also required the high priest of his choosing to be “subject to weakness” (2). Which sounds risky, especially when we’re so dependent on him being perfectly acceptable to God on our behalf. But to represent us properly God wanted his high priest to be made of the same stuff we are so he’d “deal gently with us when we sin from lack of knowledge or stupidity” (2). It meant, then, that the high priest would be up against the same weaknesses we have, and therefore God required of him personally “to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as the sins of the people” (3).
The high priest, therefore, had to provide a perfect sacrifice that God not only accepted on our behalf, but on the high priest’s own behalf too. And fortunately, we have “such a high priest – one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners” (7:26) who “offered himself” (27). So in himself he provided the perfect sacrifice God required.
So again, every step of the way, and in everything that God required for our salvation, it’s all been the high priest’s doing, not ours. And there’s only one person given that “honour” and “glory” by God (5:4-5), and that is his very own Son (5) – but with no special favours given to him too, because he not only had to suffer a human death (2:9), God also required that he be made “perfect through suffering” (10). But “Why did Jesus need to suffer?”….(next blog)
